Daring Danger Dash

by Omen

Daring Do and the One-sided Conversation

At the far reaches of Equestria lies a humongous jungle. Everypony knows it, and nopony cares. Which, in her honest opinion, was a celestiadamned stroke of luck, Daring Do thought as she virtually hacked her way through the jungle's unparalelled undergrowth with her machete. After all, if more ponies did show up around here, it would severely hinder her past time, raiding tombs and undiscovered ruins to rid them of their priceless and often highly volatile magic artifacts.

Pausing for the briefest of moments, Daring checked the blade of her tool. Finding that it was dulled too much to still be used she sheathed it and pulled out another one, this being her third during this particular adventure. And on she went, while beads of sweat slowly ran down her face and neck, as well as all four hooves. It was hard work, but it was necessary.

Suddenly, something tackled her mid-swing. Daring let out a soft oomph as the attacker knocked the wind out of her, then bucked wildly to shake off whatever creature of the jungle had sought to make her its lunch.

"Woah there, take it easy!" the creature said, fending off the blows with relative ease.

"Dash?" Daring Do asked, her voice a low growl. She pushed her pith helmet further up until it no longer hindered her view from where it had slid down during her fall. "The buck was that about?"

The blue pegasus mare rolled her eyes. "You've been walking through this jungle, hacking away at plants for the last five hours now! I mean, I'm good, but my routine doesn't extend over six hours, so could you just hurry it up? Come on, sis! We're pegasi, we could just fly there!"

Daring glowered at her obnoxious little sister as she picked up her machete. "Well, if the forest canopy weren't so thick, we could definitely do that, yes. But seeing as it's not, we wont be able to find the ruins of the Snake Priest Temple from up there. So ground work it is."

"Ugh!" Rainbow Dash rubbed her temple with a hoof. "Can't you just use that nifty compass of Pirate Colt Narrow-"

"Sparrow."

"-Sparrow to find it?" Dash continued her sentence.

"No, that would be cheating." Daring Do didn't have to wait even a moment for her sister's exasperated gasp as she continued her way through the vivid plantlife.

"Cheating? Seriously? I get that you like to stick to your books, but come on! This is ridiculous!"

"Well suck it up!" Daring snapped. "This is my life! You were the one who wanted to tag along-" she pointed her hoof accusingly at Dash - "so just deal with it!"

Rainbow rolled her magenta eyes. "Fine, whatever you say, Dashie."

Daring stopped dead in her tracks, one eye twitching. She slowly turned around to face her sister, who had stretched out one muscular wing to preen it slightly. "What did you just call me?" Daring hissed in disbelief.

"Dashie." Rainbow Dash smirked at her. "You know, I think it was pretty cool of dad to give us both similar names. I mean, Daring Dash? Sounds pretty good, don'tcha think?"

Daring swallowed and hissed through gritted teeth, "He promised not to tell you."

"He didn't," Rainbow remarked indifferently as she flexed her wing again. "I looked up your file in the law enforcement unit headquarters. Perks of being best buddies with a princess."

"So you know everything." Daring turned away and stared at the muddled reflection in the machete. "Good," she managed to choke out. She could feel her eyes burning and quickly wiped them. She couldn't let her newfound sister see her crying because of some stupid mistake she'd made.

That was when she felt a wing draping over her back. "I don't. I only looked at your name. Sorry, I probably should've trusted you, but when a almost complete stranger suddenly turns out to be your sister... well, I got curious is all."

Daring wiped her eyes again, gritting her teeth. She hadn't cried since... since she'd gotten that one letter. "Can't blame you for it. So is that why you wanted to tag along?"

"Well, yes," Rainbow Dash said, taking the machete from Darings hooves and clamping her own around it. "Spending some quality time with my big sister, getting to know her and why she didn't show up in my life for sixteen years. Perfect opportunity." She began to shlash at the plants annd bushes in their way, but Daring grabbed her hoof with her wing to stop her.

"Fine. You wanna talk? Let's talk." She motioned Dash over to a tiny clearing, where something big had vigurously attacked the trees and pushed them aside like matchsticks. Flapping her wings she flew up onto one of the fallen logs and sat down. When Dash came to join her, she took her machete back and began to clean the other two. "So, I guess I should just start talking?"

"You make it sound like an interrogation gone wrong," Dash remarked with a cocked eyebrow.

Daring slowly shook her head. "Yeah, kinda what it feels like. But I have to get this off my chest. I've been carrying my mistakes around with me for sixteen years." She took a deep breath as she pulled a whetstone from her traveler's bag and began to resharpen the blades. "As you might've guessed, dad and I... we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. I was one hell of a bad filly. Always getting into fights, getting kicked out of flight school after flight school... After I got kicked out for the first time, I kinda... snapped, you know? I had just lost all my friends, seeing as they lived nowhere near cloudsdale, and so I started breaking stuff. One time I got in a fight with a colt and broke his wing. Dad was furious. I know he was, even though he never told me."

She turned the machete in her hooves and continued, the sound of the stone scraping against the metal being the only thing to breake the silence. "I called him weak. He was always apologizing for my mistakes, always trying to make up for my misdeeds when he could've just pushed it all on me. Now I see that he was stronger than I ever could be. He put up with me, his unruly daughter who couldn't follow a simple instruction for the life of her." Again, the machete turned in her hooves.

"When I was fifteen, still without a job, spending night and day in night clubs, drinking and brawling, things changed. That was when I broke that colts wing, and this time, this time dad actually yelled at me. Of course I didn't care, tried to play it tough. So he slapped me. Once, square in the face." She held her hoof to her left cheek with a look of sorrow in her magenta eyes. "I deserved that and so much more. But he left it at that. Then he sent me to my room, and I just stormed out of the house. I flew until my wings couldn't carry me any more. Somehow I winded up in the wildernes and was lucky enough to find an abandoned cottage. Somehow I managed to get by, and I started scouting the area. By accident I stumbled across some ruins and just so happened to snatch an artifact right out of the claws of the strangest creature I had ever seen. When my wandering lead me to more ruins, I finally discovered my Cutie Mark."

She sheathed the machete and proceeded to tend to the other one. She couldn't bear to look up at her younger sister, so she just watched her hooves out of the corner of her eye as she spoke. "After that I dove into my newfound passion. The first few artifacts I sold in the nearest city, to a museum. I almost got caught by law enforcement units a few times, seeing as some of these artifacts were pretty dangerous and the princesses were quite concerned." Rainbow's hooves stayed planted firmly on the mossy log beside her. If she hated her sister yet, she didn't let it show. "With the money I had acquired I bought enough supplies and equipment, such as machetes, clothes, medicing and such, to get by in the jungle without having to fear for my life. Eventually I started doing research on the places I found. And at some point I decided that maybe I should look for a different source of income, seeing as the artifacts I found became increasingly dangerous, and not all of them just decided to conveniently shatter like that damn ring did... I heard that authors could make quite a lot of money, so after cutting into my sleep time for a few months I basically transformed my journal into the first Daring Do story ever written."

She allowed a faint smile to appear on her lips. "With the money I could finally afford the equipment I needed to keep the artifacts safe. I made it my life's goal to foil the plans of people like Ahuizotal or Dr. Caballeron, individuals who only cared about money and power. I managed to set up stashes all over the country, so whenever I'm not at home in that cozy little shack to write my novels or travel around discovering ruins, or do research on obscure myths to find ruins... Kinda lost my train of thought there, but whenever I can I travel around, securing my stashes further and make sure nothing's missing."

Her smile faltered and she sheathed her second machete. Her nose crunched up as she tried to hold back the tears that were stinging her eyes as she managed to choke out the next few words. "And then, ten years ago, I... I got the news about mom. I was cisiting the cloudsdale hospital for a medical checkup. It had something to do with some documents getting mixed up, so I had to go back there... That's when one of the nurses told me she was sorry for my loss." She burried her face in her hooves, now shaking with every breath. "I... I missed her. By just a few hours. And I've felt awful ever since. I just wish I could've made things right between us. She suffered just as much as dad, but I didn't see it. Heck, I didn't even notice she was pregnant when I left home. I'm so sorry, Dash. I'm an awful sister..."

Daring could feel a wing draping over her back. "You know," Rainbow Dash said, "you're right about one thing. You're an awful pony. I get that you were angry, but I don't get what triggered all of this. And I know you're still keeping something from me."

Daring wiped her eyes with her hoof. Sorry, Rainbow. But you're just not ready to know the whole truth... "I-I'm sorry..." she sobbed.

"I never would've let the ponies that care about me hanging, no matter what." The wing around her shoulders tugged her a bit closer. "But you're not an awful sister. You haven't really had time to be a real sister yet, so how about we just focus on that?"

Daring lifted her gaze to Rainbow's, meeting her magenta eyes with her own. Then she nodded, quietly. They continued on until late into the evening. Finally, when reaching another clearing, Daring flew up to one of the trees and loosened a steel crate tied to the branches with well-oiled chains. She produced from said crate a fine net for keeping off flies that could be hung in between the branches, and two hamocks, as well as a lamp and some matches. None of the two sisters spoke much that evening.

As Rainbow Dash made herslef comfortable in one of the hamocks, Daring Do sat down on a thick branch before the crate and pulled her journal out of her saddlebags.

Snake Priest Temple. Day one...

Comments

[The Yaoi Mistress]

Sweet!!! So I guess you are not taking the book of Daring Do as canon. Interesting... are you??? XD

[Omen]

6535332 If it's an actual physical book you mean, then no. I basically allowed my imagination to run wild the moment Daring Do turned out to be a real character, and I've always has a thing for the kind of secret family relations in stories. There are stories where Daring is said to be Dash's mom, but her parents were kinda revealed in the equestrian games episode flashback, at least if you trust the producers.

And when asked if Rainbow Dash had any siblings, they said, "Maybe you'll find out someday!" So this is the head canon I'm going with. Speaking of canons, next chapter will be a little more on the action side. And due to fimfiction regulations the tags adventure and Slice of Life can't apply to the same story. Well, it's Daring Do. Adventure is basically her life.